


Broken Promise

by Severina



Category: Walking Dead (TV)
Genre: Community: tamingthemuse
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-03-17
Updated: 2013-03-17
Packaged: 2017-12-05 13:57:43
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 890
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/724054
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Severina/pseuds/Severina
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Stay away from the city. Stay away from the people stalled in a traffic jam with no end, sitting there like… like a smorgasbord for those things, those walkers. Back roads. That was the way to stay safe.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Broken Promise

**Author's Note:**

> Written for LJ's tamingthemuse community, for the prompt "sister". Pre-series to end of Season One.
> 
> * * *

_"Take care of your sister."_

_"I will, Dad."_

The main thoroughfares were crowded with refugees, angry scared people fleeing like lemmings toward Atlanta. The voices on the emergency broadcast channel kept up a steady stream of purported safe zones, hospitals and community centers that would provide food, a roof over their heads, medical care. But by their fourth hour on the road, Andrea had noticed that the list of shelters changed drastically from one announcement to the next. St. Michael's Hospital was the first to vanish from the list, then a church in the suburbs, then a fire station. They were replaced by new locations that stayed on the rotation for half an hour, maybe a little more, before being themselves replaced by others. It didn't take a genius to figure out that the safe zones were being compromised.

And they were barely creeping up the road, hemmed in on the left by an endless stream of cars crowded with frightened people. When Andrea saw an opening on the right she took it, swinging the car onto the verge, the wheels spinning and catching in grass still damp from the morning rain. For a single, horrifying moment she thought they weren't going to make it, would be stuck with their front end half in the shallow ditch and the ass of the car hanging sideways onto the highway, when suddenly they were lurching forward, past the congestion and onto the exit. Another fifty feet and they turned onto the side road she'd glimpsed from the corner of her eye.

Back roads. Stay away from the city. Stay away from the people stalled in a traffic jam with no end, sitting there like… like a smorgasbord for those things, those walkers. Back roads. That was the way to stay safe.

* * *

_"Take care of your sister."_

Andrea hunched over the tire, resisted the urge to throw the useless jack into the bushes. On the other side of the car, Amy paced restlessly back and forth, her arms crossed at her chest to ward off the early evening chill. Her eyes darted just as nervously, ceaselessly tracking past the trees that lined either side of the road, alert and tense. 

They'd only seen one walker, a woman wearing a blood-stained dress, staggering along the side of the road as they came out of a long, slow, winding turn. Andrea'd lurched the car toward the middle of the road. But the thing, the woman, the dead woman had still stumbled into the vehicle, had scraped her nails down Amy's window, her hands slick with blood and her teeth snapping at the glass and Amy had retched, had leaned forward and vomited up what little lunch they'd had between her feet; and then cried, apologizing for the stench and then laughing through her tears and then crying even more. And the sun had been near to setting by then, starting to dip behind the trees; the narrow road they were traveling on starting to become shadowed and gloomy, making it difficult to see where she was going. Andrea had reached over to pat her arm, had murmured some inanity about everything being all right. Then had pressed her lips together and concentrated on driving through the growing murk, Amy's sniffles in her ears.

Fifteen minutes later, the tire blew.

Thank God for Dale Horvath. Andrea had leaned out the window and watched her little sports car fade into the distance, then settled back on the RV's bench seat. Had made small talk with the man; a good man, she could tell, with a good heart. Now Amy was sleeping, and Andrea sat still beside her, combed her fingers through Amy's hair.

_"Take care of your sister."_

_"I will, Dad."_

* * *

_"Take care of your sister."_

"Stay away from them."

Amy started, looking up guiltily. "What?" she said. "I was just—"

"I saw what you were _just_ ," Andrea replied. She tossed one of the soaking wet shirts to her sister, nodded toward the makeshift clothesline that they had strung between two of the tents. Waited until Amy got to her feet and reached for the clothespins before she turned back to placing a pair of pants on the line.

"No harm in looking," Amy said after a moment. "The older one is creepy, but the younger one seems to be okay."

"The Dixons are not okay," Andrea said firmly. "Not by any stretch of the imagination."

"I'm just saying, they seem to know what they're doing. We could learn from them. Maybe they're a little bit rough around the edges, but—"

"They're rednecks," Andrea cut in. "White trash. The worst kind of people. You think they'll ever give a damn about anyone other than themselves? You're wrong. Stay away from them, Amy. I mean it."

* * *

_"Take care of your sister."_

She made her way to the graves at sunrise, barely noticed passing Rick with the walkie in his hand. Sat on the newly turned earth and brushed it with her fingers, tracing obscure patterns in the dirt. She felt hollow. Felt that the breeze coming up from the valley could shred her like tissue paper, send pieces of her scattering across the quarry. Not that it mattered if they did. She had one purpose. She failed.

_"Take care of your sister."_

"I'm sorry, Daddy," she said softly.


End file.
